Finding the perfect layoutMuscarelle Director Aaron De Groft (front center) and Assistant Director of the Muscarelle and Chief Curator John Spike (back center) give W&M students a behind-the-scenes chance to arrange the perfect room configuration for the hanging of Grand Hallucination.

Piecing together the detailsDe Groft (right) and the museum’s art handlers shuffle the works from wall to wall. Students ultimately decided upon the final position of the hanging, and learned that patterns of space, the psychology of color and the layout are central to a visitor’s experience in a museum.

A visitor walks into a museum
gallery. Everything seems perfect: the
paintings are grouped; the labels are carefully placed; the texts announce the
significant themes; and the lighting entices. All of these aesthetics boast ‘here is something very special, come a
little closer.’

To the untrained eye, it appears
effortless.

However, to arrange the perfect
room configuration, to create just the right synergy is a daunting task, even
for the most seasoned curator.

Students in Dr. John T. Spike’s
seminar course, Curating and
Connoisseurship, had the opportunity to experience the process first-hand when
they were given a behind-the-scenes chance to hang the Muscarelle Museum of
Art’s latest exhibition, Grand
Hallucination: Psychedelic Prints by William Walmsley and Friedensreich
Hundertwasser. Students had already
been introduced to the work of Walmsley and Hundertwasser in a lesson co-taught
by Muscarelle Director Aaron De Groft and Spike.

The works of art are resting along
the edge of a wall, awaiting their final position. Which works should be grouped together? How should these groups be placed to make
sense in the room? Students begin to
discuss possible layouts.

“It’s a dialogue,” explains Spike,
“each work communicates to the viewer, each work interacts with its neighbor,
and all the works communicate as a team. Our job is to sort and arrange these works in a way that the public,
when it enters, is certain that that is the only possible way it could have
been laid out.”

“What do you think of the spacing,
Chelsea?” Spike calls on a student as he circles the group of learners. In
addition to teaching in the Department of Art & Art History, he is also the
assistant director of the Muscarelle and chief curator.

“I really don’t like that one where
it is,” Chelsea Bell ’12 points to a playful and colorful seaman print by
Hundertwasser.

“I also don’t like it there,” Spike
responds. He pushes his pupil
further. “Why don’t you like it there?”

“It’s not as lit up toward the
corner and I feel that [the portrait] needs more light,” she says. Shimmering
metallic colors such as gold, silver, bronze and aluminum are barely seen in
their current position.

De Groft chimes in. “Now remember, the lighting hasn’t been set
up, yet. So, you have to imagine as if
we have the lights.”

How to space the works is a key
question in exhibition installations. One way is to make the spacing perfectly
even. Or, if there is a long wall as part of the floor plan, the works could be
installed in the middle of the wall, leaving space on the ends, which helps
focus attention on the concentrated group in the center.

“We have these long walls, and not
so many works, so the idea is to create punctuation points so that visitors
aren’t just zinging around,” De Groft tells the students.

Discussions turned to
Hundertwasser’s signature piece, Irinaland
Over the Balkans, 1971-1972. Hundertwasser (1928-2000), an Austrian artist once as famous as Picasso,
is well known for infusing spirals and architectural designs into his silkscreen
prints. “Do the features of a yellow cat-like face, embossed with metallic,
make this print a candidate for the main wall?” Spike asks his students to
ponder whether the piece should stand alone or be centered between the series
of four seamen.

And so the afternoon went, piece by
piece. Students took votes on where they
thought each piece should be placed, and the museum’s art handlers shuffled the
works from wall to wall. They ultimately decided upon the final position of the
hanging, and learned that patterns of space, the psychology of color and the
layout are central to a visitor’s experience in a museum. What is visible to
the eye matters most. Every last detail
counts.

“We have a philosophy that we don’t
paint the walls white,” De Groft declares. “Ever. You make think these walls are white, but they’re not.” Students lean in closer to the wall –
squinting – to see what De Groft is teaching the class. They now see the subtle bluish green tone
under the light.

For De Groft, the Walmsley (1923 –
2003) works are particularly revered. As
a Ph.D. student at Florida State University, he met Walmsley, who had retired
from teaching, but continued to work on his lithographs every day.

“My colleague Ph.D. student said to
me, ‘Why are you hanging around with that old man?’” De Groft recollects as he
walks over to one of Walmsley’s alter-ego prints, “Ding Dong Daddy,” the
longest continued series of prints in the history of art. “And I said, ‘That old man will teach you
more than any of your textbooks will.’”

There are 26 total works by
Walmsley on display, including prints in Day-Glo metallic ink as well as
fluorescent lithographs. The psychedelic
movement of the Sixties is evident through the layers of bright colors such as
magenta, orange and yellow, beaming back to the viewer.

Three color separation drawings of
a “Ding Dong Daddy” print also are included in the exhibition, a private
donation made by De Groft. De Groft,
then a pupil, asked Walmsley if he could have these proofs, which were normally
thrown away after the printing process.

As the installation nears
completion, Melissa Parris, registrar for the Muscarelle, gives the students a
tutorial about the reproduction of artwork and the artists’ rights. Exhibitions must be promoted and advertised
so visitors will see them, but copyright is a central issue in today’s
tech-savvy world.

“Even if we purchase a work of art,
or if it’s donated to us, we can own the physical art, but we do not own the copyright,”
explains Parris. “The copyright remains
with the artist, or the estate, foundation, or trust, after they die.” But that is another lesson.

“We called this exhibition the
‘Grand Hallucination,’ because it’s like the ‘Grand Illumination,” says De
Groft.

And like the Grand Illumination,
the Grand Hallucination exhibition is certainly spectacular.

The Grand Hallucination exhibition runs from now through March 15. Tickets are $10. Admission is free for Museum members, William
& Mary faculty, staff and students, and children under 12.

Artworks
by Hundertwasser from collection donated to the Muscarelle of Art by Theodore
and Diana Bodner. Artwork by Walmsley
from collection donated to the Muscarelle by his daughter, Mary Sacco.